Rotation and Revolution of Earth Movements of the Earth Earth s Revolution Rotation

Smile and learn! This has been my journey through the solar system, people. It was incredible! Whoa! Greetings, Earthling. I need you for a new adventure. I hope you're ready. This is a very important mission. A gigantic asteroid is heading towards your planet and we have to save it. We have to study the rotation and revolution movements of planet Earth to find out whether it will impact Earth or pass at a distance. Would you help me? Sure! Of course I would! Mission commences now! Right away? It's been ages! I've missed you! There's no time to lose. I need you to tell me everything you know about the rotation and revolution movements of planet Earth. It's your lucky day, my friend. This week we learned all about it in class and I scored a 10. Top marks! Just like the rest of the planets in the solar system, planet Earth moves in two ways, rotation and revolution. Can you see how the Earth is spinning around its axis? This movement is called rotation. The Earth spins around an imaginary line which passes through the poles. If you look closely, you'll notice that the axis is a little inclined, almost 24 degrees. It takes planet Earth 24 hours to complete one rotation on its axis, which is the equivalent of one day. Rotation explains day and night. As you can see, it's daytime in the part of the Earth that faces the sun and nighttime on the dark side. Do you understand? I do! Rotation means the Earth is spinning around itself. Exactly right! Now I'll explain revolution. The movement of the Earth around the sun is called revolution. The Earth takes one whole year to go around the sun. Before, people used to think that the orbit of the Earth around the sun was cyclical, but they weren't right. As you can see here, the orbit is elliptical. Thanks to revolution and the inclination of the rotation axis of the Earth, we have four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The more the hemisphere is inclined towards the sun, the more directly the sunlight reaches the Earth's surface. It's warmer and that's why it's summertime. By contrast, the other hemisphere is less inclined, so sunlight is less direct. That's why it's colder and it's wintertime. Here, we can see that it's summertime in the northern hemisphere and wintertime in the southern hemisphere. The opposite will occur in six months. Sunlight will reach the southern hemisphere in a more direct way and it will be summer, while in the northern hemisphere, it will be winter. Owing to the fact that the revolution of the Earth around the sun doesn't take exactly 365 days, but 365 days and 6 hours, there are leap years, which have one more day, 366 days. That's why every four years, February has one more day, day 29. Wow, how impressive. So these calculations mean that planet Earth is doomed? The asteroid will impact Earth in one minute. No! Wait, did you take into account that this is a leap year? Oopsie. Hold on. The Earth is safe from the asteroid. It will pass close by without hitting it. Yay! And it's all thanks to the leap year. Do you want to keep on learning? Try for free our Smile and Learn platform for a month and enjoy all of our games, videos, and interactive stories. Go for it! Download Smile and Learn on your mobile, tablet, or PC.